2012 shaping up to be hottest year on record in the US

Douglas Heaven, reporter

(Image: NOAA's National Climatic Data Center)

There's no question that the US is experiencing an exceptionally hot and dry year. But sometimes it takes a line on a graph to bring a point home.

This graphic shows the year-to-date departure from average temperature in the US for the past 118 years. Each month includes the average temperature of the previous months in that year: March 2012, for example, shows the average temperature for the January-February-March period. 2012 has had the warmest first seven months of any year on record.

The five warmest and five coldest years are also highlighted, showing that three of the five warmest years in the US have occurred since 1998. The coldest five years were all before 1924.

"At this point, I cannot say with certainty if this is a statistical outlier or not," says Jake Crouch at the National Climatic Data Center, part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA will wait until this extreme period is over before doing an in-depth analysis.

"It is often hard to put an event into proper historical perspective while it is still unfolding," says Crouch. "It is almost the same as describing a car accident while the vehicles are still moving."

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/223fd95f/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A80C20A120Eus0Ehottest0Eyear0Egraph0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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